Even the woodland walk was thus more amusing than she thought. CHAPTER XV. Mr. Rowland, when his children left him, was left with a very uncomfortable prick of thought, a sort of thorn lacerating the skin, so to speak, of his mind. The suggestion which had been thrown at him as the Spanish bullfighters throw their ornamented darts, stuck as they do, and kept up an irritating smart, though it was not, he said, to himself of the least importance. No society! He came out to the colonnade in the intervals of his anxious work of supervision, and looked round him wistfully. He walked indeed all round the house, looking out in every direction. Towards the west there were visible, by glimpses among the trees, some houses of the village of Kilrossie, a high roof or two, and the white spire of the newly built church; to the east, on the other side of the loch, another village-town extended along the edge of the gleaming water, shining in the sunshine. Plenty of human habitations, fellow-creatures on every side: but society! Wealth has a very curious effect upon the mind in this respect. The people who came to the handsome houses at Kilrossie for the bathing season were many of them much superior to James Rowland in birth and education, and quite equal to him in intelligence, except in his own particular sphere; yet this man who had been only a man in a foundry when those good people were enjoying the advantages of the saut water, and all the luxuries of comparative wealth, would now have felt himself humiliated had he been obliged to accept the society of the good people at Kilrossie as all he might hope to attain. Their neighbourhood was rather a trouble than an enlivenment to his mental vision. And the county people, who had their “places” scattered about at intervals, were in many cases neither so well off, nor so intelligent as these: and they would look down upon the railway man, while the others would regard him with respect. There was no possibility of doubt as to which of the two he would be most comfortable with. And yet he slurred them over cursorily as if they were not there, and sighed into the sweet vacant air which contained no loftier indication of society. How proud he would have been to have known the Kilrossie people fifteen years ago--how it would have elated him to be asked under their roof! and now their presence irritated him as a set of imposters who perhaps would thrust themselves upon him in the guise of society: that was not the society for which he cared.